In a year that’s already seen Hurricane Harvey drown Texas under record rains, and Hurricane Irma rip through the Caribbean with record winds, its easy to go one of two ways. For much of the media, interest in the storms and their aftermath already seems to be waning. After all, there’s only so many pictures of waterlogged homes and haggard people waiting for badly needed relief that can be run before the ratings start to fall.
On the other hand, there can be the temptation to view every forecast with trepidation and every possible storm as the next coming disaster. That’s pretty easy when you see an image like this one.
Hurricane Jose, which had been expected to dissipate by now ... didn't. Instead its wandered around in the space between the Bahamas and Bermuda, and held onto its strength much longer than predicted. It's unlikely that any of these storms will grow into monsters like Irma. But they represent the mid-point of an active hurricane season, one that's unlikely to end without "gifting” us with with additional storms and additional damage.
The only gift we can give back is this: Stop pretending that the extreme weather is not caused by climate change. That doesn't mean just fighting back against climate change denial, it means discarding the carefully measured language of "well, we can't know for sure if global warming is the cause behind this specific storm, but..." This pedantic position isn't helping anyone. It's only providing a comfortable shelter from which those whose job it is to cast doubt on the human contribution to climate change can sally forth to wave the banner of “see, we don't know all the answers.” We do know there are more storms, and more severe storms than in the past. A pretense at precision that leads to greater confusion is not admirable.
There's always a better answer. There are always more decimal places that can be filled in. Anyone watching the way that the models varied on the track of Irma, even over the last few hours of its course toward Florida, can see that more time, more knowledge, more sheer computer horsepower. Predictions about hurricane paths will get better. Predictions about climate change will get better. Maybe in ten years, or twenty, we’ll be able to quantify just how much mankind’s impact on the world contributed to a specific storm.
But we can't wait until we've filed the last rough spot from those predictions on the warming world any more than we can sit in the path of a storm and wait to see if it's as bad as the numbers say. Is climate change behind this big hurricane season? The answer isn't "well...” It’s just "yes."
Now let's go read some pundits.
Note: I’m traveling this week and didn’t have access to the tools to make the the “this week in Trump” infographic. So instead I’ve dipped into the always interesting images from over at Compound Interest. Click through for an expanded view.
Ganesh Sitaraman on how America is straining at the seams.
Our Constitution has at least one radical feature: It isn’t designed for a society with economic inequality.
There are other things the Constitution wasn’t written for, of course. The founders didn’t foresee America becoming a global superpower. They didn’t plan for the internet or nuclear weapons. And they certainly couldn’t have imagined a former reality television star president. Commentators wring their hands over all of these transformations — though these days, they tend to focus on whether this country’s founding document can survive the current president.
But there is a different, and far more stubborn, risk that our country faces — and which, arguably, led to the TV star turned president in the first place. Our Constitution was not built for a country with so much wealth concentrated at the very top nor for the threats that invariably accompany it: oligarchs and populist demagogues.
Is it even possible to build a society that can survive in the face of inequity so great that one person has the resources of not dozens, or even thousands, but millions of fellow citizens. Can even a pretense of democracy be maintained in such a situation?
And what if the answer is "No?”
What is surprising about the design of our Constitution is that it isn’t a class warfare constitution. Our Constitution doesn’t mandate that only the wealthy can become senators, and we don’t have a tribune of the plebs. Our founding charter doesn’t have structural checks and balances between economic classes: not between rich and poor, and certainly not between corporate interests and ordinary workers. This was a radical change in the history of constitutional government.
Please go read the rest. This is a problem that's not going to blow away with the season.
Ellen Pao looks at what really has changed for women in tech since her own ordeal.
Over the past year, at least a dozen women have publicly shared their stories of being discriminated against and harassed in tech by their managers, by investors or by board members. Privately, I have heard dozens more. ...
The huge change is that people now acknowledge the problem. Women telling their stories are believed, for the most part, by the public and by the press. In February, with a clear and powerful blog post about her time at Uber, Susan Fowler blew open the doors on bad behavior in tech. She made deliberate choices that made her an unassailable commentator: no litigation, no P.R. firm and detailed descriptions of each incident left no room for a smear campaign or any question of impropriety. Her clear and precise retelling of the harassment and retaliation she said she suffered — and the failures of management to fix it — are now widely known.
Of course, there’s a class of supporters who’ve taken Trump’s election as a signal that it’s safe for anyone to join the trolls of gamergate, no matter what their age. Even if the majority has accepted that the ‘M’ in STEM all too often stands for “Misogyny,” the next step is the important one: How do we fix it?
Ruth Marcus notices the distinct lack of women in the Trump White House.
“Does anybody listen to women when they speak around here?”
There were 11 people seated around the table in the White House’s Blue Room, debating the future of the “dreamers” over honey sesame crispy beef, when House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) tried to make her point — only to find the men talking over her.
Trump’s White House is singularly clear of both females and minorities in top positions. Chief of Staff, Secretary of State, Attorney General, Secretary of Defense … all the most powerful cabinet positions are safely in the hands of white men. Of course, Betsy DeVos did get Education … kind of like how so many otherwise all-male corporations are willing to hand over HR or communications to one lucky woman officer.
But it’s not as if Trump’s halls aren’t graced by a female presence. He has Ivanka there. Though, since Trump’s “senior adviser” has made it clear that her father doesn’t bother to listen to her advise, it appears that’s just for decorative purposes.
As much as women seized on Trump’s “nasty woman” put-down and transformed it into a slogan of empowerment, the uncomfortable truth remains that navigating any environment — whether a political campaign or corporate workplace — requires women to hunt for the elusive spot between too pushy and not assertive enough.
But … why? In 30 plus years of corporate experience, I’ve seen multiple men who were not just tolerated, but rewarded for bombastic, aggressive, overbearing, backstabbing, frontstabbing, confrontational assholerly. It’s not exactly the most pleasant measure, but the question shouldn’t be how women can thread the needle between passive and pushy, but when will a woman be allowed to be a genius, an idiot, a uniter, a divider, a bully, a champion, a stalwart, a liar, a leader, and an idiot — like a man.
Amber Tamblyn had the temerity to call out a persistent boor, braggart, and plain old letch. And she’s not going to stop.
For women in America who come forward with stories of harassment, abuse and sexual assault, there are not two sides to every story, however noble that principle might seem. Women do not get to have a side. They get to have an interrogation. Too often, they are questioned mercilessly about whether their side is legitimate. Especially if that side happens to accuse a man of stature, then that woman has to consider the scrutiny and repercussions she’ll be subjected to by sharing her side.
Every day, women across the country consider the risks. That is our day job and our night shift. We have a diploma in risk consideration. Consider that skirt. Consider that dark alley. Consider questioning your boss. Consider what your daughter will think of you. Consider what your mother will think of what your daughter will think of you. Consider how it will be twisted and used against you in a court of law. Consider whether you did, perhaps, really ask for it. Consider your weight. Consider dieting. Consider agelessness. Consider silence.
Thankfully Amber Tamblyn has determined to not spend much time contemplating that last idea.
Carl Elliot provides a fascinating history lesson and a terrific suggestion.
If you look closely at Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 school desegregation decision, you’ll see that Brown wasn’t a single case. It was five cases consolidated into one. Briggs v. Elliott, the first of them, took place in my home state, South Carolina. Briggs came about after the Rev. Joseph De Laine organized a group of black parents in Clarendon County to petition for equal educational facilities.
I’m going to admit, with no small amount of shame, that I knew none of this.
The man who stood fast against that request — the Elliott of Briggs v. Elliott — was the chairman of the school board, Roderick Miles Elliott. Or as he was known in my family, Uncle Roddy. …
For reasons that remain murky, the Supreme Court case came to be called Brown rather than Briggs, even though Briggs preceded Brown both alphabetically and temporally. So it was Brown v. Board of Education that was memorialized in the history textbooks, and our family name was spared association in the public mind with a racist cause.
Elliot’s suggestion that the man who thwarted his uncle should be memorialized is a good one. He certainly should be celebrated.
In a just world, the name of Joseph De Laine would already be familiar to South Carolinians. Mr. De Laine was a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and a teacher in the Clarendon County public schools, where his wife, Mattie, also taught. Black schools in Clarendon County in the 1940s were in abysmal condition — dilapidated, poorly heated and woefully understaffed. Children had to walk miles to attend school, because the school board, led by Uncle Roddy, refused to provide a bus. It provided 30 buses for white children.
Nate DiMeo created this piece some weeks ago, but it wasn’t until today that I ran into it.
Monuments don’t just appear in the wake of someone’s death — they are erected for reasons specific to a time and place. In 1905, one such memorial was put up in downtown Memphis, Tennessee, to commemorate Nathan Bedford Forrest, who had died in 1877.
The story of the monument, the reason, and the century since is historically fascinating, frustrating, and beautifully told. I don’t often as this, but please go over to DiMeo’s podcast at The Memory Palace and devote ten minutes of your Sunday morning to this piece. You won’t be sorry.
“They held a parade at the unveiling of the new statue and made speeches to honor the northward facing general. They said nothing of slavery. They said much about heritage and honor and chivalry. They said nothing … of the terror it had wrought, nothing of the assassinations or the lynchings.”
Memorials are not memories. And historical markers are not history. Go and listen.
Leonard Pitts wants to call a Trump a Trump.
He was sued for systematically refusing to rent to African Americans and settled out of court.
He demanded the death penalty for five black and Hispanic kids charged in the notorious Central Park jogger rape case — and refuses to recant to this day, though the young men were long ago exonerated and set free.
He had a disdain for African Americans so pronounced that, according to an employee at one of his casinos, supervisors would remove black workers from the floor and ensconce them in a back room whenever he came through.
Pitt’s list of Trump’s despicable racist behavior is, unfortunately, too long to list here. But it makes a handy, if still incomplete, reference.
So what, pray tell, did Jemele Hill get wrong? Last week, the co-host of ESPN’s “SportsCenter” issued tweets calling the so-called president, among other things, “a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists.”
And … he is. Yes, America should be shocked, but not by Hill’s statement.
Kathleen Parker on how the world turned upside down.
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who lost the Democratic nomination to Clinton, is still running and still ranting about Medicare for everyone. Given the likely eventuality of a single-payer health-care system, he and Larry David may as well take a victory lap. It’s beginning to seem that Sanders won after all. As did the Democrats.
On the losing side are the Republicans who put their faith in a guy who promised the moon but has managed only to deliver a galaxy of tweets and several significant staff replacements. Trump the Republican was always a strain to credulity, but people can make themselves believe just about anything, as thousands of years of ritual sacrifice and snake dances confirm. Trump the salesman has always known this, either instinctively or as the result of his first successful con.
While Parker may seem angry at Republicans in this snippet, the truth seems to be that she’s angry at everyone, left, right, and center. But she does seem ready to walk away and concede the field.
The wall is not, in fact, getting built, though repairs are currently being made to existing wall-like structures. Ditto health care, which, instead of being repealed and replaced, likely will be an Obamacare fix, followed by the single-payer system that Democrats wanted all along and that Trump supported before he became a “Republican.”
Thus, it would seem that Democrats really won the election and that Trump, despite his faux-angry campaign promises, is a pretty good Democrat after all.
Which is, naturally, as massive load a of pure BS as anything served up by Trump. But expect it to become the theme song of Republicans who have discovered that, now that they have the chance to institute the hateful policies they claim to love, they can’t get a damn thing done.
David Litt hits Donald Trump for his lack of a sense of humor.
Donald Trump almost never laughs. The leader of the free world frequently displays a tight-lipped smile, but mirth-wise, that is as far as he will go. Except for the fact that Nazis don’t seem to mind him too much, Mr. Trump is the Captain von Trapp of commanders in chief.
It would be easy to dismiss this as a personality quirk. Some people are just hard laughs. Perhaps Mr. Trump is simply the hardest laugh of all. But the president’s laughter, or lack thereof, is a window into the way he views the world’s most difficult job. For the first time in recent memory, we have a commander in chief without a sense of humor — and America is paying the price.
There’s a simple reason why Trump doesn’t laugh. He’s stupid. That doesn’t mean he never gets the punch line of a joke, he just fears that there’s some extra level to it that he doesn’t understand. He frets that in some way he might be the butt of the joke (rather than just a butt).
Trump does have a sense of humor — it’s just the same nasty, dark, mean, stunted sense of humor that’s shared by Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. The sense of humor that finds pulling the wings of flies hilarious. The humor of a petty bully.
Only most of the time, Trump is afraid to indulge in even that poor excuse for laughter. Because he’s stupid. And he knows it.
Dana Milbank has Trumpitis.
President Trump is killing me.
No, really. He’s killing me.
I went for my annual physical last month, and, for the first time in my 49 years, I had to report that I’ve not been feeling well: fatigue, headaches, poor sleep, even some occasional chest pain. My doctor checked my blood pressure, which had always been normal before: alarmingly high!
Hey, I had to add a second BP medicine to my daily regime to keep the top of my skull from blowing off with numbers that are elevated enough to scale Mt. Everest. It must be Trump! That’s good to know. I was worried I’d have to give up the six cups of coffee and fine selection from Little Debbie I usually down before five AM. Now all I have to do is wait out Trump.
I arrived at a self-diagnosis: I was suffering from Trump Hypertensive Unexplained Disorder, or THUD. For almost five decades, I had been the picture of health, but eight months into Trump’s presidency, I was suddenly ailing. Trump is the only variable, I told my doctor. “He sure is variable,” my doc replied, endorsing the diagnosis.
Me, too. Pass the Fudge Rounds. Oh, and Dana? Hitting fifty sucks.
Sebastian Mallaby on why the stock market’s rise doesn’t mean Wall Street loves Trump.
Last year, in the wake of President Trump’s election, financial markets took off on a wild sprint, apparently believing his promise to make America great again. Ten months later, the financiers are wiser: The president’s immigration clampdown alarms them; his divisive response to Charlottesville appalls them. Despite the heady expectations of this past winter, there has been no sign of an infrastructure plan; few expect serious tax reform given the bungling of health-care legislation, not to mention the sidelining of Gary Cohn, the tax plan’s chief Sherpa. And yet, as if by a miracle of levitation, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index is still about a fifth above its level on the day of the election. What’s happening?
There’s almost no prescription made by Mallaby, or Cohn, that I would support. But it’s interesting to see that we’re in something of an agreement on why Trump’s ineffectiveness and chaotic action haven’t depressed the markets.
The short answer is that foreign leaders have done a surprisingly good job of making foreign countries great again. From Xi Jinping’s China to Emmanuel Macron’s France, politicians are delivering policies that businesses want. As a result, the world economy is growing faster than at any time since the post-crisis bump of 2010. The yuan and the euro have risen sharply against the dollar. A more competitive greenback and the prospect of strong exports have supported U.S. stock prices. A Chinese communist and a French technocrat have done more for American business than Trump has.
I’d argue that Xi has been nearly as ineffective as Trump. It’s just that China finished off another dip and recovery cycle — one that’s been boosted by Trump’s irresponsible foreign policy. Any company or corporation that was weighing a “US or China” question on almost any scale has quietly made it’s decision in the last few months, and very few of those decisions have gone Trump’s way. Xi looks good simply because all he has to do is sit there and let Trump look worse.
Rana Foroohar on how we’re going the wrong way on fiscal regulations.
It’s an amazing fact that a decade on from the financial crisis, Americans are still arguing about how to reform our financial system. Even as the Trump administration argues for a roll-back of the hard-won Dodd-Frank banking regulation, it’s worth noting that disenchantment with Wall Street is, paradoxically, one of the things that brought the president to office. …
Our economic illness has a name: financialization. It’s a term for the trend by which Wall Street and its way of thinking have come to reign supreme in America, permeating not just the financial industry but all American business.
And … see the first article on how the Constitution is being leveraged apart by income disparity. This is one of the biggest engines driving that disparity.
Has this system of financialization really shifted at all in the last 10 years? In a word, no. While the Dodd-Frank financial reform requirements mean that the largest banks can correctly claim that they have offloaded risky assets and bolstered the amount of cash on their balance sheets, lending to real businesses is still a small fraction of what they do.
Back to the National Hurricane Center where Tropical Storm Maria is set to follow an all-too-familiar path that includes poor battered Barbuda and St. Martin.
Current projections have the storm reaching Category 3 status before it reaches Puerto Rico on Wednesday. It seems all too likely that the storm could eventually hit the Atlantic Coast, somewhere around North Carolina or Virginia. Though at this stage neither the course nor the strength of the storm can be adequately predicted, at least it seems that it won’t give Florida another punch.
Meanwhile the seemingly unkillable Hurricane Jose is moving almost due north toward New England. It may strike the coast in the Northeast, though the best model calls for the storm to curl out to sea and dissipate. Of course, that’s what they said last time.
As for the contention that we can state that this season’s hurricanes are definitely the result of climate change … here, have a graph.
Before 1950, there were an average of less than 5 hurricanes a year. Between 1950 and 2000, that average was just under 6 hurricanes a year. After 2000, the average was over 7 hurricanes a year.
Arlene, Bret, Cindy … Irene was the seventh storm and fourth hurricane of the 2017 season, and that season is only at midpoint. Jose was hurricane number five. Katia was hurricane number six. In two more days, Maria is likely to be number seven.
It’s not just the number of storms that are increasing. The same trend is visible looking at the number of major hurricanes per year, those reaching Category 3 or higher.
For the century up to 1950, the Atlantic coughed up 1.4 major hurricanes per year. Between 1950 and 2000, that number went up to 2.3. From 2000 to 2017, there were over 3 major hurricanes in an average year. Harvey was the first major hurricane of 2017, Irma was the second, Jose the third. Maria, if it follows predictions, will be number four.
We’ve become so used to used to our beefed up hurricane levels that we’ve treated years after 2005 as “low,” even though they included a couple of seasons producing double-digit numbers of storms. Few big storms hit the US during that period. That’s called luck, not a decrease in storms.
One more little stat. In the total records of Atlantic hurricanes, only seven storms have produced winds of 180 mph or higher. Only one of those storms occurred before 1980. No earlier storm produced those winds for as long as Hurricane Irma.
So … forget the “well, gosh, golly, we can’t say but...” A season like this, a season in which there were three major hurricanes before mid-September, would have been absolutely extraordinary until very recently. And without the heat of today’s ocean, no hurricane could have produced the sustained speed of Irma.
Without climate change, there would be no Hurricane Irma.